Word: benbow
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...wouldn't expect a guy wearing muddy boots and worn moleskin pants to saunter past the formally dressed footmen at London's Fortnum & Mason, the famous Piccadilly food emporium that's a favorite of the British royals. But Steve Benbow, 38, is not your average fancy-food consumer. He is one of many urban apiarists, or beekeepers, in the British capital, and although he usually enters Fortnum's by the staff door and heads to the roof, where he oversees four beehives, some days he can't resist stopping on the grand ground floor for the thrill of seeing...
Come spring, when Benbow's hives return to the roof after a yearlong renovation at Fortnum's, hundreds of thousands of his honeybees will be buzzing over to Buckingham Palace, specifically its 42-acre (17 hectare) private garden, the source of pollen and nectar for their very fine honey...
...aficionado, city honey is purer, according to Benbow, because in the country you have oilseed rape, genetically modified crops, pesticides and fertilizers, whereas traffic pollution doesn't seem to affect bees. City bees are more productive: ample food plus warmer temperatures mean they yield up to three times as much honey as their country cousins, according to the British Beekeepers Association. "London's a delight for a bee, because there are so many flowering plants and trees," says Benbow, who describes the taste of the honey he collects from 17 other hives he has hidden on London rooftops as similar...
...need city folk for their window boxes and gardens. In the country, their numbers are in steep decline, in part because of intensive farming and the loss of hedgerows. But what of their sting? "The worst-tempered bees I know are those kept on the heather in Wales," says Benbow. "My London honeybees are a gentler breed." That said, Benbow keeps his hives high, so that the bees head out from them way above people's heads before dropping down to forage...
That might be cold comfort if your knowledge of bees is based more on the 1978 movie The Swarm than on this season's box-office honeypot Bee Movie. "My job is to make sure swarming doesn't happen," says Benbow, who monitors his London hives weekly during the high season...